Marketing Forum Theme Day 1: Do Marketing Differently: Innovate During A Recession

Forrester’s Christine Spivey Overby kicked off the conference, first reminiscing on how great innovation comes out of times of economic struggle. Her example, which is so suited for Forrester’s marketing conference in Orlando, is Walt Disney’s creative genius to develop an iconic entertainment franchise. She stresses that now is the time to do marketing differently by thinking differently and embracing innovation.

[Marketers should innovate now, despite the perceived risk]

Why innovate now:
VP/Principal Analyst on the Interactive Marketing team, Shar VanBoskirk spoke next. She indicates that a recent forecast shows that mobile, social, email, display, and search marketing will increase at a CGR of 17% in 2014. She gives some funny examples of some silly Twitter examples from overzealous customers. Risks: we take them because of the thrill, or the innovation.

Accessible innovation:
A marketing program development that you can pursue within your own role in order to solve problems or improve business results. It’s not limited to your CMO or your corporate strategy group. An accessible innovation should have the following traits:

Enhance: Replace incumbent channel with an unproven one.

Include: Incorporate community perspective

Empathize: Relating to your community

Iterate: Speeds developing

Shar notes that BestBuy’s remix is a great example of innovating during a recession. They’ve provided an API for third party developers – I’ve outlined the program – the most unique is GPS discovery tool and Camel. With all innovation comes risk, in Best Buy’s case the risk is letting anyone use brand assets.

7-11 Takes Risks with Simpsons tie-in
Next, we had Rita Bargerhuff, the VP of Marketing, discussing how 7-11 takes risks. She outlines there are four requirements before diving into risk: 1) is it right for your Brand 2) is it right for consumers 3) is it right for internal stakeholders and 4) Is it right for the environment.

Rita eloquently gave a case study of how they aligned the 7-11 brand with the popular Simpsons movie, which while was risky as the show paints “Kwik-e-mart” in a culturally sensitive parody, see a public flickr set. Taking the risk required intensive stakeholder buy-in, which resulted in movie tie-ins, movie product tie-in (squishee), and even creating a Kwik-e-mart store. Did it pay off? Yes, there were lines wrapped around the store to get into the store.

Her closing remarks? “Success leads to success You’ll attract new business partners” well spoken.